veyance, a curious fact was stated by Lord Canning, in his First Report as Postmaster-General. This was, that in 1844, the Post Office received from the proprietors of a coach running between Lancaster and Carlisle a payment of about £200 a year for the privilege of carrying the mail twice a day between those cities, while eleven years later, that is at the time his lordship wrote, the sum of £12,000 a year was being paid to the railway for the same service. This fact shows that the obligation to maintain time, the superior appointments, and the general excellence of the mail coaches, had given them a prestige which the rival coaches that did not secure the royal patronage did not enjoy. Even at this day, some of the few coaches and passenger vehicles plying in the remote districts of the kingdom, strive to enhance their value in the eyes of tourists by the announcement that they "carry her Majesty's mails." THE COACH-BUILDING CONTRACT. The splendid coaches, on which the royal arms were emblazoned, were built of one pattern from a period early in this century. The contractors for horsing the mails were bound to take their coaches from the Government builder, for though the Post Office undertook that the building of the coaches should be done at its sight, the department only undertook the cost of cleaning, oiling, and greasing them, the latter expense amounting, it is stated by Mr. Lewins, to £2200 a year. With regard to this method of supplying the mail coaches on one pattern and from one builder, it is related that a coach-builder, in the days of the old mail coaches made a fortune by contracting to supply government with mail coaches at a price so low that all competitors said he must be ruined. He knew, however, what he was about. In a coach, certain portions only wear out; and as he built all the mails on one model, when the old coaches were returned, he took out such parts as were not worn, and by their help turned out a new coach at 75 per Icent of what it would otherwise have cost him. "That was a clever fellow," said speaker, who narrated the anecdote, "and would have deserved a gold medal for a plan which tended to reduce the cost of carrying letters." a recent CHAPTER IV. "The ghosts of mail coaches, and horses, guards, coachmen, and passengers were in the habit of making journeys regularly every night."-The Story of the Bagman's Uncle, PICKWICK, chap. xlix. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF THE MAIL COACH-PLEASURES OF THE MAIL-MISERIES OF THE MAIL-THE OUTSIDE PASSENGER-THE IF ROAD GAME "-THE MAIL-COACH DRIVER-THE MAIL-GUARD. PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF THE MAIL COACH. one finds in Fielding and the other novelists of last century | the best pictures of the modes of travelling and phases of life on the road in their day, our own time has produced, in Charles Dickens, one whose works are full of most interesting sketches of mail-coach life. The "Story of the Bagman's Uncle," from which a quotation graces the opening of this chapter, is but one of many such sketches scattered throughout the novels of Dickens, in which "mail coaches, and horses, guards, coachmen, and passengers' are made to repeat their journeys before our eyes, and to depict for our enlightenment the peculiar characteristics of a mode of progression now only existing in the recollections of elderly people, and which must soon cease to be an experience in living memories. The coaches amongst which the Bagman's uncle found himself on the night of his remarkable adventure are thus described : "The doors had been torn from their hinges and removed; the linings had been stripped off, only a shred hanging here and there by a rusty nail; the lamps were gone; the poles had long since vanished; the ironwork was rusty; the paint worn away. They were the decayed skeletons of departed mails ;" and here the venerable relative of the narrator moralised after this fashion : "My uncle rested his head upon his hand, and thought of the busy bustling people who had rattled about in the old coaches, and were now as silent and changed; he thought of the numbers of people to whom one of those crazy mouldering vehicles had borne, night after night, for many years and through all weathers, the anxiously expected intelligence, the eagerly looked for remittance, the promised assurance of health and safety, the sudden announcement of sickness and death. The merchant, the The passage of a private carriage | kingdom at head quarters. In the or post-chaise through the country days before railways and televillages was ever a source of in- graphs, the postmasters in the terest, attracting the "gaping gaze" country were required to send up of the people, and enlisting a per- all election intelligence by the sonal sympathy to which watching speediest mode possible, a special the passage of express trains, for despatch to the Post Office in Lonexample, could never give rise. don marked "by guard," being a In the case of the mail coach, its recognised method. It was by regularity and the knowledge that this means that the results of a it came from the great centre of general election slowly reached the the nation, or at least was in im- ministry in London, and no such mediate connection with another rapid resignation of the ministry coach that ran to London, gave it on hearing of the progress of the an importance beyond all that election as was witnessed in 1874 private and occasional conveyances could then have been possible. could obtain. The late Miss Mar- In the event of any disturbance tineau, in her History of England or anticipated rising, a despatch during the Thirty Years' Peace, has "by guard" would be sent by the taken notice of this, and fur- local authorities, as the readiest nished some interesting illustra- means of apprising the Government tions. During the trial of the | of the day. unfortunate Queen Caroline, for example, all along the line of the mails, "crowds stood waiting in the burning sunshine for news of the trial, which was shouted out to them as the coach passed." When the Reform Bill agitation was at its height, the mail roads were watched everywhere by persons anxious to obtain news of the progress of the measure, and the coachmen and guards on the top of the mail coaches shouted out the tidings. In the case of a ministerial crisis, it is stated that mail guards were in use to distribute hand-bills on their route, which were furnished to them in London for this purpose. In the opposite way, the mail guard served as a means of communication with the rulers of the As with the stage coach, personal reminiscences or pictures of mailcoach travel divide themselves into three or four well-defined heads. There are the miseries and the pleasures of travelling, debates as to the relative merits of outside and inside places, pictures of the guards, the coachmen, the fellowpassengers, and lastly, in more recent writings, the discussion whether the traveller may not have lost something of real value by the more rapid but less picturesque mode of travelling by rail. PLEASURES OF THE MAIL. To the more buoyant traveller the mail coach was almost always a pleasure, especially if of the same mind as Mr. O'Doherty, from whose "Maxims," published half | quoted in an earlier chapter, who a century ago in Blackwood's from his appreciation of coach Magazine, the following may be given : “Maxim Forty-seventh. "There are two methods of mailcoach travelling, the generous and the sparing. I have tried both, and give my voice decidedly for the former. It is all stuff that you hear about eating and drinking plentifully inducing fever, etc., during a long journey. Eating and drinking copiously produce nothing, mind and body being well regulated, but sleepiness, and I know no place where that inclination can be indulged less reprehensibly than in a maila mailcoach, for at least sixteen hours out of the twenty-four. In travelling I make it a point to eat whenever I can sit down, and to drink (ale) whenever the coach stops. As for the interim, when I can neither eat nor drink, I smoke if upon deck, and snuff if inside. "N.B.—Of course I mean when there is no opportunity for flirtation. travelling might have been the "nephew of his uncle," or, in other words, the narrator of Dickens' story, discusses from the bagman's point of view the advantages of the coaches of 1837, in the following terms : "The best and cheapest and most convenient method of traversing the country is a question of frequent disputation among travellers. Some advocate gig, cherish the antiquated mode of some coach travelling. Some still the saddle, and even a few have an affectionate leaning towards the most primitive mode of conveyance, viz. that afforded by their own unassisted pedestals. The latter class is, however, nearly extinct, and in our pilgrimages we have only met with a solitary specimen of this thrifty and painstaking class. He however seems endowed with ubiquity. "We believe the following observations will be found correct, at any rate they are the result of observation. “If you travel through a thinly populated district, such as the greater part of Scotland, where the trading-towns are few and far apart, travel by coach. “If your trade is more directed to large towns, and if you remain a considerable time in each of these, travel by coach. "If it be necessary to your business that you should be able to move very rapidly from one town to another, and if you are |